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I read and respectfully disagree-- this is college, not high school or trade school. You're not training for diesel engine repair here, you're training for whi
by warcher 9y ago
I read and respectfully disagree-- this is college, not high school or trade school. You're not training for diesel engine repair here, you're training for white-collar jobs. Basic algebra is pretty uniformly necessary today, and it isn't becoming less so in the future.
- bsder 9y agoCommunity college isn't quite that cut and dried. There are quite a few 2-year Associate's degrees that are not "academic". One of the community colleges near me has quite a good nursing program. How much "algebra" will they need vs. procedures for medication dosage calculation? "Algebra" has a lot of dead ends for practical use. A great example is "How do you divide by a fraction?"--a fairly routine algebraic manipulation. Yet, I can't even think of when I have had a real world situation where I had to "divide by a fraction". Multiply by a fraction? Sure. Divide by a whole number? Sure. Calculate a percentage? Sure. Divide by a fraction? Ummmmm. I would argue that algebra is both too advanced in many places AND too sketchy in others. Geometry is something that people need and don't get because it is after algebra that they fail. The worst part is that a lot of people have better geometric intuition than mathematical and would do better to have geometry first. Should they have a math course? Yes. Should it be the pedagogical algebra? Not as obvious.